Gideon to help raise funds to buy buses

Baringo Senator and Kanu Chairman Gideon Moi will today lead a group of South Rift leaders to Narok for a fundraiser. The leaders will be in Emurwa Dikirr constituency to raise funds for purchase of buses for two secondary schools.

Political pundits believe this is a strategy to market Kanu in the United Republican Party (URP) stronghold, as a third force in the Rift Valley region.

Area MP Johanna Ngeno said Gideon (pictured right) will be joined by Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto, Kanu Secretary General Nick Salat and Kuresoi South MP Zakayo Cheruiyot among others.

“This is not a party issue because we are fundraising for the students of Emurwa Dikirr,” Mr Ngeno said.

Mr Salat, however, said they will also use the opportunity to market Kanu in the region.

“Of course there has been discontent in the region because of the move by the URP leadership to dissolve and join Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP). For quite some time we have been making serious inroads in Rift Valley and the entire country,” he said.

political path

The meeting comes hot on the heels of a prayer meeting held in the neighbouring Nakuru County at the Kiptororo Shrine for Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang over the cases they are facing at the International Criminal Court.

Only Ngeno and Chepkwony attended the prayers that also attracted more than 200 leaders from both the Jubilee alliance and Opposition.

Jonathan Rono, a URP official in Mauche and a close ally of Isaac Ruto, said leaders attending the fundraiser would discuss the the South Rift region’s political future, which they accuse the Deputy President of sidelining.

URP rebel leaders who have been against the formation of JAP have been toying with the idea of charting a different political path away from the DP.

The birth of JAP, which mainly brings together The Nation Alliance (TNA), URP and willing affiliates in the Jubilee alliance, has received tacit approval and outright rejection in equal measure from key leaders in the region, setting the stage for fresh political realignment.

However, the DP, who has managed to convince a significant number of politicians in the region to join the new party, has been firm that those opposing the move would be swept aside by the JAP wave come 2017.

“I do not know if other leaders have been invited but I have received an invitation to raise funds for the purchase of school buses, which I will attend,” Governor Ruto said.

Ruto has been categorical in his rejection of JAP, dismissing it as a wave he will not follow.

“We were not consulted before the party was formed. We have just heard people saying the party will bring us together.

“How will that happen when there was no consensus in the first place?” he asked.

The county chief is largely perceived as a rebel in the ruling Jubilee alliance because he has openly criticised the coalition’s top brass from time to time, accusing them of attempting to reverse the gains of devolution.

At the end of last month, during a funds drive in aide of a women’s group in Bomet County, Governor Ruto and the DP differed sharply in public over issues related to the region’s politics.

In May, Ruto accused the presidency of breaking a prior unwritten agreement to steer clear of politics at a church fundraiser they attended.

He had told The Standard that Kipsigis elders had agreed with leaders that the fundraiser should not be ‘tainted’ with political statements in light of the supremacy wars that had rocked the county.

The county chief said the President duped the local leaders and went ahead to try and popularise JAP and shower praise on the DP in front of his political rivals.

“Bomet is not Kabete where ‘Baba Yao’ (Ferdinand Waititu) won the seat on a JAP ticket. If the DP thinks he can parachute the same notion to change the political tide in the South Rift, then the writing is on the wall for him.

“He must also embrace consultative leadership just as the President called on all leaders to do,” Ruto observed.